Lyric Analysis: In Christ Alone

Let's do this:

In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
Here in love of Christ I stand

In Christ alone! – who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save:
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me,
For I am His and He is mine-
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can every pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns of calls me home.
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.

Lyrics copyright 2001 Kingsway/Thankyou Music

In Christ Alone

This song, a collaboration between songwriters Stuart Townend and Keith Getty has a timeless feel to it, like an old hymn. Many songs aim for a "hymn-like" quality but fall short. Why?

One big reason is the shlocky tendency to use antiquated words. Notice that Townend and Getty don't do that -- no "thees," "thous," "forsooths," or any such animal.

This song is a modern hymn because of it's structure. What do I mean by that?

On a line level, the entire song is written in iambic tetrameter. Each line contains four iambs, a unit of measurement consisting of two syllables, one unstressed and one stressed (so at it's most basic, you'll notice that there are eight syllables per line). As is usually the case with strict verse, whether written by Shakespeare or current practitioners, there are subsitutions in some of the stresses (but this is getting very technical. If you want to know more along those lines I can send you some links to articles about meter and scansion). The metered line structure actually tells us, subconsciosly, how to sing the lines. For instance, in the line

No power of hell, no scheme of man,

we sing "power" as "pow'r." We reduce it to one syllable because we are "into the flow." We don't need to be told to do it, we just do it because we're caught up in the songwriter's rhythm.


Then, we see that this song is written in the folk ballad format, usually used by hymn writers, of a series of verses. No chorus. A few months ago Mike Cosper was telling me about a modern hymn project -- perhaps it was from the Passion Worship people -- that featured new choruses in the old hymns. The artists had tried to make the hymns more relevant by sticking their own choruses in the middle of the hymns to give them a modern format (verse - chorus - verse). Well, that's fine and dandy, but now they're not really hymns.

Also notice that each verse sheds a further light on what it means to be in Christ. We could say that the first and last verses are more of an overview, while the second focuses on his death and the third, the resurrection. But even the first and last are not mere mirrors of each other. The first focuses on the love of Christ; the last, on His power. So we have a fully actualized song, where every word tells. Masterful!